I’m currently writing and illustrating a children’s book called Carl & Leonardo. It’s a lovely story about the little boy and a small cat, how they get along and how they maintain their friendship. The main aim of the book is to show the importance of friendship, how it helps in life and how easy it may seem to loose it sometimes.
So, Carl seemed like the object I should try out the new style on. Here is the result:
And the work-in-progress gif, of course. Rough sketch, defined sketch, laying colours and final.
Aurelie’s style is one of my favorite, hence I’ve started my art studies with her. So far I have pointed out some key features of her artworks which I may apply in my own art as well. Next step: make an illustration in her style to make sure I’ve learned sth this evening. YEY!
Some time ago me, my boyfriend and our common friend have started to work on a new table-top detective game. Our original plan is to simply work on a game and put it on Kickstarter to hopefully move it further to the market.
Seeing that I am the artist and designer in the team, my main aim is to nail certain style, and to make it happen I gonna study other artists’ works as well as do some tutorials which I feel are needed to go through.
So, here we go!
1. Aurélie Neyret
Aurélie Neyret is a French comic artist and illustrator that I came across once and madly fell in love with. Her style is somehow soft, the illustrations are very light and breathing. So indeed I’d love to discover learn the prime features of her works to see what I can apply to the game art from it.
I’ve found Peter on Behance and have instantly followed him - his style is incredible, and this is actually something I would love to achieve for our game art. Unfortunately, there are no tutorials available, but let’s hope I can easily get a reply if I drop him a line once.
Olga is a Russian artist based in Saint-Petersburg. Her artworks also have a look I’d love to give for a game, so she is a must to study. I love how textured and with that soft her artworks look like. And the shapes she gives to objects, too.
Brian is an American illustrator with a veeery unique style and touch with colours. Actually, colours is something I gonna study from his works. He hears them freely and mixes them very well. And again, he adds nice textures to the artworks with certain pastel brushes, which I may need to use as well. In overall, he is one hell of an artist!
That’s all for now I guess. Though surely I’ll come up with more things to study quite soon. I’ve got 3 weeks to concrete the style for the game, so not gonna waste time!
I’ve been on my way home with my schoolmate, and she shared that there are 4 small furry friends to be given away to new families. These are 4 kittens of which Sindy, the abovementioned friend, has been taking care for about 3 months already. Indeed, this is a hard move for her. “I want them to be given to people I know, so that I rely on new holders”, she said. Here I came up with the idea to make her nice illustration that she can keep after saying goodbye to her kittens and use in promotional purpose so that people get found.
I’ve been working in Illustrator, for about 6-8 hours. The kittens themselves are the cartoonish versions of the real ones. Perhaps, the hardest part was to make the sketch since I wanted to depict cats with the memories of my pet’s movements, but I haven'e seen him for a while and unfortunately will never see him again, so that I’ve only had one blurry image in my head. However, I’ve managed with this step and started to work digitally. To add some depth into the illustration, I used Grain Effect on Gradient. For I love details, I decided to apply more of them to the ball. And the last part - cats are clumsy, so that the thread follows them all around. Et voila!
Hopefully I will make more of these artworks soon enough!
It has happened to me that the one of my best friends wasn’t even human. When I was a little child, just starting school with my twin-sister, my parents got a tiny peach-coloured kitty somethere at the street-market in Saint-Petersburg. That was almost 13 years ago. We gave him a name - Tomas, and he instantly became a member of our family.
Couple of days ago he died. This is something you never expect to happen, it just strikes out of the blue. Among other cats, this one was quite unique. When just getting him, he was the only one kitten not playing with others. He felt to be alone there. However, we raised him, we gave him our love and care, and he started to give this back to us. Tomas was very attentive. If he heard that your alarm has just rang, but you continue sleeping (like I usually do), he would usually start walking on you or sit right in front of your face, waking you up. He made many of my mornings marvellous. When coming back home, he could wake up and come to meet you, but not walking around, sticking to you so you couldn’t even take off your shoes, but actually staying in couple of metres away and just waiting patiently until you give him a hug. What a cat! It is just impossible to imagine that he is not going to cheer you up anymore when you are even a bit upset. And he could do it every time before, as if he felt he is needed at this certain moment, at this certain place.
I felt completely broken when I realized how empty the house is going to be without him, and my life, too. He was some sort of a sunshine. Luckily, nothing can take the memories out of your head, so I will keep on cherishing the moments when he was with us.
Tomas has been always giving me inspiration, and here is what thinking of him gave me today:
Cute, right?
I hope you, guys, all of you who have pets, will make your favorite animal’s life as good as it would never be without you.
